Tuesday, December 25, 2012

As visions of sugar plums dance through the heads of holiday
revelers, workers tell Tasty that a very different image is pulsing
through the brains of SEIU-UHW's top officials.

This alternative vision also involves
stockings... but, um, the kind you'd see in a Victoria's Secret catalog.
According to workers, SEIU's end-of-year parties have further stimulated the
already hefty hormonal production of SEIU-UHW's president and vice president, Dave
Regan and Stan Lyles.

Regan's extra-marital escapades with union members and
staffers are already well-known. But hey... don't sell Stan short. Lyles appears to be equally hormonally
turbo-charged. And he's constantly on the prowl, say workers.

Check out this FaceBook post from a rank-and-file SEIU-UHW member, who offers the following warning about
Lyles: "Ladies, watch your panties." (Tasty has blanked out the worker's name to protect her identity. Click on image to enlarge it.)

And that's not all. A former female staffer at SEIU-UHW
describes the following frightening scene: During an SEIU-UHW staff meeting -- where Lyles was supposed to be paying
attention to the discussion -- the staffer suddenly felt a buzzing from her
cellphone and pulled it out to reveal a text message from Lyles, who was sitting across the room from her:
"U look really nice in that blouse. mmm."

This, my friends, is what happens when purple princelings are permitted to prance around the Purple Palace like some sort of imperial occupiers... madly stuffing $300,000-per-year salaries into their pockets, cutting backroom deals with bosses to slash and burn workers' pensions and health benefits, and preying on the very workers whom they're supposed to serve.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

A source has provided Tasty with an explosive document that
details the covert efforts of SEIU President Mary Kay Henry to raid the California
Nurses Association (CNA) and launch an illegal operation to interfere with
the CNA's internal membership elections.

What's the source? It's a sworn deposition by Debbie Schneider, a top official at
SEIU who served as a Deputy Trustee during SEIU's trusteeship of SEIU-UHW. Schneider is also a member of SEIU's International Executive
Board and reports directly to Mary Kay Henry.

Here's what happened. (Tasty posted original documents below.)

In 2009, Schneider gave sworn testimony as a result of a
lawsuit that the SEIU filed against NUHW's leaders. During questioning by an opposing attorney, Schneider coughed up
explosive details and a revealing document.

What does Schneider say?

SEIU Pres. Mary Kay Henry

A key part of her testimony focuses on two pages of her
handwritten notes from a meeting with Mary
Kay Henry, Dave Regan and Scott Courtney (SEIU's Organizing
Director) that took place on December 23, 2008. As you'll see, SEIU's attorneys whited-out
portions of the notes, which are stamped with identifying court numbers at the
bottom.

During the meeting, Henry, Regan, Courtney and Schneider
discuss SEIU's secret effort to illegally interfere with the CNA's internal
membership elections. For example, the SEIU officials describe how they
secretly recruited and backed 12 candidates to run for CNA's Executive Board.
SEIU even created and funded a dummy non-profit organization called
"California Nurses First," with a staff of 30, as a front group to attack
the CNA, according to Schneider's notes.

But that's not all. In December of 2008, SEIU's top leaders
discuss their intention to use the soon-to-be-trusteed SEIU-UHW as a launching
pad for waging decertification raids against the CNA's membership in California. Here's an excerpt from Schneider's notes, which are labeled
"CNA Briefing":

Their CHW contract
window opens March -- contract ("K") expires end of June. We'll be
running decerts -- [CNA members] will be in same hospitals as we, as UHW
trustees, are in.

Notably, Henry and Co. are talking about the trusteeship of
SEIU-UHW as if it's a 'done deal' even though Ray
Marshall, the so-called "independent" hearing officer, hadn't
even written his report yet! Here's one excerpt from Schneider's testimony where she’s questioned about this:

Attorney: The next
line "February end of May campaign" -- is that "elections"?

Schneider:It must
be between the nominations and the election time.

Attorney: And the
next one there "CHW contract window opens March.Contract expiration end of June."What is that referring to?

Schneider:Their CHW
contract window, when it opens and when the contract expires.

…

Attorney:If we read this line, it says:"Same hospitals as we as UHW
trustees."Do you see that?

Schneider:Yes.

Attorney:Why are
you referring to yourself as an UHW trustee on 12/23/2008?

Schneider:I don't
know.

What else is in the documents? The second page of the notes
details SEIU's "three-pronged strategy" to wage war on the CNA. Two
of the prongs are: "Expose RoseAnn
[DeMoro] and Organization" and "Mount California Offense."
Ominously, the third prong has been whited-out by SEIU's
attorneys.

In addition to the meeting notes, Schneider gives up more
details during her deposition, which was recorded by a court reporter. Below, Tasty has
posted two relevant excerpts from the 252-page transcript.

For example, during aggressive questioning by an attorney,
Schneider admits that SEIU’s officials tapped Dennis
Rivera to recruit Catholic Healthcare West's CEO, Lloyd Dean, to help SEIU in its plot to impose a trusteeship on SEIU-UHW and then raid
the CNA. Talk about the boss's union!! For those who don't know him, Dennis Rivera is a "Senior Policy
Adviser" for Mary Kay Henry.

SEIU's Dave Regan

Regan, in an apparent payback to his corporate partner, later
agreed to eliminate
CHW workers' defined-benefit pension plan, thereby giving Dean Lloyd a gift
worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to CHW's own financial records.

Take a look at the documents below for more details. They
offer an amazing glimpse at how SEIU has worked hand-in-glove with the bosses to
destroy two aggressive unions that fight for workers.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Sources report that SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan is facing a
rebellion from a substantial part of the union’s Executive Board.

Here’s the latest from this fast-moving story:

Last month, SEIU-UHW’s Executive Board formally rejected
Regan’s proposed union-wide budget for 2013. The proposed budget details Regan’s
spending priorities, along with the salaries and benefits of SEIU-UHW’s
staffers, which total approximately $110 million.

Why did the Executive Board members reject the proposed
budget? Sources say several issues are at play.

First, many of the Board’s members simply don’t trust Regan.
Last year, Regan spent $5 million of workers’ dues money on two harebrained (and
totally deceptive) statewide ballot measures that Regan was later forced to abandon…
but only after he’d flushed millions of the union’s money down the toilet. This
article
in the Los Angeles Times offers more coverage of this debacle.

Secondly, Board members are upset at SEIU-UHW’s
failure to provide basic representation to the union’s members. At a recent
meeting, Board members reportedly stood up and said their co-workers get zero
assistance from the union… and can’t even get a phone call returned. This is
partly due to the new “culture” that Regan has created inside the union, where staffers
have widely adopted and replicated the disrespect and arrogance that Regan shows
towards the union’s members.

Thirdly, Board members complained that Regan is negotiating one
concessionary contract after the next... which are stripping workers of their
hard-earned pensions and health benefits. In fact, by Tasty’s count, Regan has
already eliminated the defined-benefit pension plans for more than 20,000 of
SEIU-UHW’s members.

Hal Ruddick

In perhaps the most infamous episode, Regan and staffer Hal Ruddick blatantly lied
to SEIU-UHW’s 14,000 members at Dignity Health/Catholic Healthcare West in
order to get them to switch
into a cheap 401(k)-style plan that stripped hundreds of millions of dollars
from workers' pockets.

Sources describe a dramatic exchange at a recent Board
meeting. In reference to Regan's concessionary contracts, Board members asked: Why are
Regan and SEIU-UHW’s staffers still getting their defined-benefit pensions and
fully employer-paid family health coverage when tens of thousands of the union’s
rank-and-file members are losing these precise benefits?

Fair question, right? In fact, Regan has a particularly fat pension
plan that will pay him more than $17,000 PER MONTH along with full health benefits,
for the rest of his life!

So what was Regan’s response? The middle finger! Regan arrogantly
threatened to do an end run around the Executive Board by “bringing the budget
to the members for their approval,” say sources.

Can Regan carry out his threat? Only if we wants a
constitutional crisis and lawsuits. SEIU-UHW’s constitution clearly gives the
budgeting powers to the Board. Specifically, Article XI, Section 2(C) says:

The Board is
responsible to make final decisions in adopting the budget and on other key
financial issues.

Meanwhile, as the crisis deepens, the clock is ticking. Only
14 days are left to complete the budget before January 1. Stay tuned!

Friday, December 14, 2012

Tasty hears that Dave Regan is bringing his concessionary
caravan to more than a half dozen Sutter Health hospitals that employ thousands
of SEIU-UHW’s members. Sutter
is the largest hospital chain in Northern California and has pocketed $1.6
billion in profits during the past two years.

Readers may recall that in August, Regan cut a deal with Sutter’s
Alta Bates Summit Medical Center
that allowed the hospital to subcontract
more than 100 of SEIU-UHW members' jobs -- or nearly 10% of the entire bargaining unit.

So what’s the latest?

Several weeks ago, Regan negotiated a new contract for
SEIU-UHW’s members at Sutter Lakeside
Hospital. SEIU's new deal slashes workers’ health benefits and imposes a
wage freeze during the first year of the contract -- just like the wage freeze
that Regan negotiated for 14,000 workers at Dignity Health/Catholic Healthcare
West.

Regan also inked new contracts for SEIU-UHW’s members at
Sutter’s St. Luke’s Hospital in San
Francisco and Sutter Medical Center of
Santa Rosa. Under these deals, workers will be forced to pay hundreds of dollars
each month for a health insurance plan that’s always been free. Here’s an excerpt from
the tentative agreement, signed by SEIU-UHW’s Julie
Kwiek, that puts workers on the hook to pay at least 27% of the monthly
health premiums by the end of the contract. (Click on image below to enlarge it.)

Oh, and that’s not all. SEIU-UHW officials agreed to cut workers’
reporting pay in half and to implement a corporate wellness program.

Yesterday, SEIU bargained with Sutter Roseville Medical Center and, according to workers, was
trying to force huge concessions down the throats of workers. Members of
SEIU-UHW’s own bargaining committee began rebelling against their union as reports
circulated that Regan had cut a secret back-room deal with the company’s execs
to slash their benefits.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Several days ago, SEIU
Local 99 triumphantly announced the names of the candidates it’s endorsing
for upcoming races for the city council, school district and mayor’s office in
Los Angeles.

According to a
post on the union’s website, Local 99’s endorsement process was a shining
example of bottom-up democracy that featured rank-and-file members questioning
the candidates in townhall forums and then making the endorsement decisions through
democratic votes.

Sounds wonderful, right?

Well… we’ve all learned that things ain’t what they seem to
be in Purple Land. And in this case, an internal email describes what actually
happened.

It turns out that Local 99’s top officials -- including
Executive Director Courtni
Pugh -- secretly made the union’s endorsement decisions BEFORE the membership
meetings actually took place on December 4, 5 and 6.

An internal email dated November 30 spells out the SEIU
officials’ so-called “recommendations” for each endorsement.

Our recommendations are listed below--PLEASE
keep all of these recommendations confidential.

The email even explains why the SEIU officials endorsed David
Vela, a candidate for the community college district:

endorsing over
incumbent b/c he is a more reliable vote.

The email goes on to instruct Local 99’s staffers to screen
the rank-and-file members who are likely to attend the endorsement meetings so they
can pack the room full of “solid members who will be… voting these ways on
these races.”

About Me

Legal Statement:
Sternburgerwithfries.blogspot.com is a labor union related gossip site which publishes rumors, speculation, assumptions, opinions and conjecture in addition to accurately reported facts. Information on this site may or may not be true and sternburgerwithfries.blogspot.com makes no warranty as to the validity of any claims.
If you think there is false info on this site, email me and we can see what we can do, otherwise, just enjoy!